All Posts Tagged With: "principles"

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald spotlights the backtracking of key Senate Democrats on the issue of CIA torture…

Time constraints prevented me yesterday from writing about Dianne Feinstein’s comments concerning torture in yesterday’s New York Times, in which the California Senator — who will replace Jay Rockefeller as Chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee — rather clearly backtracked on what had been her repeated, unequivocal insistence throughout the year that the CIA should be required to comply with the Army Field Manual when interrogation detainees.  Time’s Michael Scherer picked up on the same backtracking and did a very good job of highlighting what appears to be Feinstein’s (as well as Ron Wyden’s) conspicuous, and somewhat disturbing, reversals.

But it’s actually somewhat worse even than Scherer suggests.  According to Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, who wrote the article, Feinstein and Wyden are just two of the “senior Democratic lawmakers” who have “seemed reluctant in recent interviews to commit the new administration to following the Army Field Manual in all cases” — despite the fact that both Feinstein and Wyden said throughout the year that they emphatically favored such a measure.

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What makes this so notable is that, for the last year, Feinstein and Wyden were both insistent that the only way to end torture and restore America’s standing in the world was to require CIA compliance with the Army Field Manual — period.  But as long as George Bush was President, it was cheap and easy for Feinstein and Wyden to argue that, because they knew there was no chance it would ever happen.  As they well knew, they lacked the votes to override Bush’s inevitable veto of any such legislation.  So as long as Bush was President, it was all just posturing, strutting around demanding absolute anti-torture legislation they knew would never pass.

But that has all changed now.  Although Obama’s top intelligence adviser, John Brennan, has questioned whether it was necessary or wise to do so, Obama himself said repeatedly and unequivocally during the campaign that he supported legislation to compel CIA compliance with the Army Field Manual, making it virtually impossible that he would veto any such legislation.  Senate Democrats know now that if they pass the law they claimed to so vehemently support, it would actually get enacted.

So now, suddenly, Feinstein and Wyden are sending at least preliminary signals that they are far more “flexible” on the issue — I believe the all-purpose catchword now is “pragmatic” — than they ever were before.

Very disappointing, but not in the least surprising. The Democrats are proving once again they are no more principled or trustworthy than their counterparts.

You can read Greenwald’s entire in-depth Salon piece here.

Each year, the Fourth of July is a good time to reflect on the original Independence Day — the day the Declaration of Independence was approved — and what it represented. Not only is it beneficial for Americans to reflect upon the freedoms, values and principles declared on that day, it is also beneficial for our government and those elected, appointed and charged with leading it to remember and take heed of what it said.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.